Arisa rose with the grace of a young goddess, her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in a splendid golden confusion.  Contarini watched her with possessive eyes, as she went and came back, bringing him the drink.  She brought him yellow wine of Chios in a glass calix of Murano, blown air-thin upon a slender stem and just touched here and there with drops of tender blue.

“A health to the bride of Jacopo Contarini!” she said, with a ringing little laugh.

Then she set the wine to her lips, so that they were wet with it, and gave him the glass; and as she stooped to give it, her hair fell forward and almost hid her from him.

“A health to the shower of gold!” he said, and he drank.

She sat down beside him, crossing her feet like an Eastern woman, and he set the empty glass carelessly upon the marble floor, as though it had been a thing of no price.

“That glass was made at her father’s furnace,” he said.

“A pity he could not have made his daughter of glass too,” answered Arisa.

“Graceful and silent?”

“And easily destroyed!  But if I say that, you will think me jealous, and I am not.  She will bring you wealth.  I wish her a long life, long enough to understand that she has been sold to you for your good name, like a slave, as I was sold, but that you gave gold for me because you wanted me for myself, whereas you want nothing of her but her gold.”

“But for that—­” Contarini seemed to be hesitating.  “I never meant to marry her,” he added.

“And but for that, you would not!  But for that!  But for the only thing which I have not to give you!  I wish the world were mine, with all the rich secret things in it, the myriads of millions of diamonds in the earth, the thousand rivers of gold that lie deep in the mountain rocks, and all mankind, and all that mankind has, from end to end of it!  Then you should have it all for your own, and you would not need to marry the little red-haired girl with the fish’s mouth!”

Contarini laughed again.

“Have you seen her, that you can describe her so well?  She may have black hair.  Who knows?”

“Yes.  Perhaps it is black, thin and coarse like the hair on a mule’s tail; and she has black eyes, like ripe olives set in the white of a hard-boiled egg; and she has a dark skin like Spanish leather which shines when she is hot and is grey when she is cold; and a black down on her upper lip; and teeth like a young horse.  I hate those dark women!”

“But you have never seen her!  She may be very pretty.”

“Pretty, then!  She shall be as you choose.  She shall have a round face, round eyes, a round nose and a round mouth!  Her face shall be pink and white, her eyes shall be of blue glass and her hair shall be as smooth and yellow as fresh butter.  She shall have little fat white hands like a healthy baby, a double chin and a short waist.  Then she will be what people call pretty.”